In a recent blog post (if you didn't have a chance yet to read it, click on this link), I shared how our G2 students supported our PK1 students in finding answers to their wonderings and questions within their current unit of inquiry about living things (Sharing the Planet). During this past week, our PK1 inquirers did a wonderful job sharing some of the learning that resulted from this collaboration and I thought you might enjoy hearing some more about the process (following the phases of the inquiry cycle as described by Kath Murdoch) and seeing some additional snapshots.

TUNING IN

In the classroom, our PK1 inquirers had shared with their teachers what they were interested to learn about and/or what they were wondering about. Based on this, we grouped students, letting those with similar topics/wonderings work together in one group, each group facilitated by an adult. We asked students next to share what they thought they already knew about the topic and many students shared with much enthusiasm. During this process, more wonderings, more questions were generated.

FINDING OUT, SORTING OUT, GOING FURTHER

For the next phases of our inquiry circles, we asked the G2 buddies for help. They joined the PK1 students in the library to help them look for answers to their questions, mainly in books, but also by accessing some kid-friendly databases (like World Book Online and Pebble Go) and websites. Our second graders as the experienced inquirers, showed their buddies how to find information in a nonfiction book, helped them read text in books, databases and websites, assisted them in sorting out and recording the information as well as taking note of any new questions emerging.

DRAWING CONCLUSIONS

Then it was time to identify the learning that we wanted to share with classmates and practice presenting it within our groups.

TAKING ACTION (and Reflection)

Then we were ready to take action, to share our learning with others. Everybody had learned so much and was so excited about their particular learning! During the presentations, students and teachers were pretty impressed hearing about facts such as sharks having up to 3,000 teeth, bees communicating with each other through a special dance, that guinea pigs' teeth grow all their life, that cats can climb trees because they have such sharp nails, that dog puppies are blind at first, that dogs chew bones to clean their teeth, that birds are the only animals with feathers, that snakes loose their skin when it gets too tight, and that most snakes are not dangerous to humans - just to mention some of our learning. ​We all learned so much with each other and from each other. Well done, PK1 inquirers!

Below are a few more snapshots from each class' inquiry circles. Enjoy!

​As I already shared in another post (if you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, click on this link please), our second graders pursued questions and wonderings of personal interest about landmarks through inquiry circles a couple of weeks ago. In the following two videos, I have captured some of the learning to show you how we go about inquiry circles and with how much enthusiasm and engagement our second graders learned and shared their learning with others in this way:

​Last week, we spent some time reflecting on the process for students to share what they were especially proud of (for example, collaborating, finding lots of information in different ways, sharing our learning in creative ways) and what they might want to do differently or work more on next time (for example, making sure that everybody in the group is on task at all times, looking into more ways on how we can share our learning, working in even smaller groups). These reflections were another opportunity for our second graders to show how familiar they are with the inquiry process.

​This week, our second grade inquirers got to share their knowledge and skills around being an inquirer with their PK1 buddies who are experiencing inquiry circles for the very first time. Under the transdisciplinary theme Sharing the Planet, our youngest inquirers were curious to learn about a variety of topics such as pets (dogs, kittens, guinea pigs), reptiles (snakes and crocodiles), ocean animals (whales, sharks, fish), mammals (gorillas and elephants), birds and plants.

​Our second graders discovered that even though they are confident inquirers, helping someone much younger can be a challenging task as you need to explain the answers in a developmentally appropriate way as well as make sure you maintain your buddies interest in the task.

​Overall, our second graders did a wonderful job helping their buddies to find answers to their questions in nonfiction books and in kid-friendly online resources. As the photos show, our PK1 students enjoyed the experience too and some wonderful collaboration and joined learning happened. Well done, G2 and PK1 students!

As shared in a dedicated blog post last week (click on this link if you have missed it), several of our classes have been learning through inquiry circles recently. Under the transdisciplinary theme Sharing the Planet, our first graders inquired about plants, pursuing personal questions and wonderings. The areas of interest ranged from the plant life cycle, the needs of plants, seeds, meat-eating plants, plants growing under extreme conditions, to how humans use plants. I always enjoy capturing some of the wonderful learning in pictures and video clips to share with others and of course with our young inquirers. This time, I have asked two students in each grade 1 class, to talk a bit about the process and to explain what they are doing in each phase of the inquiry cycle. We hope you enjoy watching the videos and learning more about inquiry circles.

The videos are also a great resource for reflection. During the past week, our first graders watched their respective video to then talk about proud moments and areas they hope to grow during future inquiries.

Here is what our students are most proud of:
Everybody worked together as a team.
We all got to share our ideas with the group and everyone listened.
We all accepted each other's ideas.
We used different ways to find answers.
We were communicating with the expert: asking questions, listening and sharing what we know.
Being better readers helped us to be better inquirers.
We used all kinds of skills from literacy, math, art and technology.
We thought about how to share our learning and came up with creative ways.
We were a good audience and listened to the presentations.
We learned lots from other groups' presentations.

Here is what we would like to do differently next time:
We want to have smaller groups of people who want to answer the same question.
We want to make sure that everyone uses their time properly.
We want to do more actions when presenting.
We want to speak/present with a big voice.
We want to make sure that everyone always listens.
We want to get inspiration from other presentations (on how to present).
We want to share our learning with different people (outside our classroom community) and help them to learn.
We could teach others about doing inquiry circles.
We could do inquiry circles at home.

How much our first graders enjoy learning through inquiry circles is best reflected in the following comments:
​
We want to find out more about our topics next time.
We want to have more time to learn.
We want to have more time for inquiry circles - everyone enjoys it so much!
We want more inquiry circles to learn more - in all units of inquiry and in the library.

​Over the past couple of weeks, as we collaborated with teachers and students in Kindergarten, grade 1, grade 2 and grade 3 on inquiry circles, it was exciting to see once again what a powerful learning experience these inquiry circles are for everyone involved. One of the best indicators of how much our students enjoy learning in this way is the response we get whenever we announce to our students that a session comes to an end: nobody wants the sessions to end, not even when it is the session from which students head into Spring break (as we experienced with one of our grade 2 classes).

​So, how does it work, you might wonder.Students work in small groups with other students who have similar questions. An adult facilitates each group’s inquiries. Following the phases of Kath Murdoch’s inquiry model (tuning in, finding out, sorting out, going further, drawing conclusions, acting and reflecting), students search for information in various ways (reading books, exploring websites, talking to experts, making their own observations/experiments etc.), synthesize what they discover, to then share with their teachers and peers. They decide what they share and how they share it and there is usually a wide range of presentation styles, from more informal chats, to posters, nonfiction books, videos, some produced with green screen, to news show skits, just to mention a few.

​And what is it, you might wonder, that gets students so excited about inquiry circles.First of all, students get to pursue their own questions, whatever they are curious to find out within the given unit of inquiry. Our students also enjoy working in small groups with others who have similar questions and wonderings. Collaborating in this way allows everyone to contribute their strengths while at the same time benefitting from what others have to offer the group. The work and the responsibilities are shared. Further, having choice empowers and inspires students: choice over what to learn, how to learn and how to present it. The creativity we see in some of the presentations is just fantastic.

And what do we as teachers/librarians do in all of this?We learn alongside our students! Each year, I am surprised how much I discover that I had never heard of before. As the more experienced inquirers, we also model and facilitate searching for and using information. We help in accessing and recording information (the degree to which we do this depends on the grade level and group of students we work with) so that our students’ developing literacy skills don’t get in the way of their inquiries.

Below are a couple of snapshots for you from the individual classes/grades with a promise that more will follow on this blog over the next week or two:

Kindergarteners inquiring about the states of matter under the transdisciplinary theme How the World Works

First graders inquiring about plants under the transdisciplinary theme Sharing the Planet

Second graders inquiring about landmarks under the transdisciplinary theme Where We Are In Place And Time

Third Graders inquiring about explorers under the transdisciplinary theme Where We Are In Place And Time

​If you would like to read more about inquiry circles, check out the article Ms. Rachel and I wrote for for HKA Voices: Inquiry Circles: Where Passion and Learning Meet.

You might have heard your PK1 student use some new vocabulary recently when talking about their (library) books, describing their book as either fiction or nonfiction/informational. A few weeks ago, we began exploring the differences between these two categories of books, introducing the terminology but putting our main focus on the different purposes the books serve. Not only do we want our young inquirers to know about the difference between fiction and nonfiction books, we want them to make conscious choices when they are choosing books, asking themselves whether what they have selected is meeting their wishes and needs: are they looking for a story to read or for facts to learn more about a topic of interest? Getting into the habit of doing this is a great way of preparing them to be reflective information seekers later on.

For this purpose, we have had...

... paired read-alouds - one fiction and one nonfiction book about the same topic - that allowed conversations about the differences between the two books;

... sorting activities - allowing students to practise identifying fiction and nonfiction books and the respective purposes they serve;

... exploration time - letting students take a closer look at some fiction and nonfiction titles;

... and giving our students lots of opportunity to apply this new learning when checking out books each week.

You might like to encourage your child to use the vocabulary and share their learning by using the words yourself and by asking your child about the respective book checked out, whether it might be fiction or nonfiction - and most importantly, with what purpose in mind it was selected: to hear a story or to learn something new about a topic.

More than two weeks have passed since Literacy Week and it has again been a bit more quiet on the library blog - but not in the library itself. It has been as busy as ever as you can also see from our constantly growing author inquiry display. The library is packed every morning with students reading, exchanging books, doing origami or playing a boardgame with a friend. During the day classes visit to inquire about authors, to discover new books for pleasure reading and personal inquiries, to participate in book clubs and literature circles and to dig deep into personal wonderings during inquiry circles as part of their current unit of inquiry (Sharing the Planet). Below are a few snapshots. Enjoy!

PK1 students exploring the difference between fiction and nonfiction/informational books...

PK2 making a new literary friend and discovering what life can look like in South Africa through Niki Daly's Jamela books...

Kindergartners finding out more about author Matt Cooper and getting a chance to connect to their prior learning under Sharing the Planet when listening to and discussing The Last Gibbon...

G1 continuing their inquiry about Atinuke and enthusiastically learning and sharing their learning about plants during inquiry circles...

G2 students embarked on a new author inquiry - Ying Chang Compestine - and are intrigued by the stories they heard so far and have many questions and wonderings already...

G3 students continuing to inquire about Lenore Look - currently we are reading Ruby Lu Brave and True, making connections to what we learned about and from her during our Skype as well as what we already know about Alvin Ho...

G4 students continue finding out more about Phil Bildner, surprised to discover how clearly they can hear his voice in his stories...

G5 students reflected on their Skype with Rob Buyea, in particular what they learned about writing from him and what strategies they might like to try out in their own writing...

"All my life I'll think of you, I promise I will. I won't ever forget you." (The Butterfly Lion)

Dear G5 Students,

So we have come to the end of The Butterfly Lion, a book we started way back at the beginning of the school year; a book that I have loved from the very first time I read it several years ago and that has gotten a whole new meaning for me as I read it aloud to you; an experience that I won't ever forget...

In a way, it is this story that led us through most part of this first semester as we accompany young Michael who runs away from boarding school, has a chance encounter with an old lady and her dog, and gets to hear Millie’s, Bertie’s and of course, the lion’s story; a white lion, who becomes the White Prince and then the Butterfly Lion.

Along the way, we revisited and practiced all kinds of inquiry skills:

​​Searching for information in print and in online resources, during which you showed me that you know how to access reliable, safe and kid-friendly resources through the Primary Portal, so please keep using them ;)

​Recording the information we discovered and sorting it into a data gathering grid, thereby answering some of our questions and learning about the author;

​Giving our inquiry a starting point by brainstorming what we think we know about the author Michael Morpurgo;

Sharing our personal wonderings and formulating questions;

Grouping his books into categories (identifying keywords) and revisiting in the process the nine literary genres;

​Looking at our responsibilities as inquirers to give credit to all sources used and practicing how to do this with the help of an online citation builder called EasyBib (I am excited to see you already making good use of these new skills for your UOI and Art projects).Recently, we also looked at the inquiry process as a whole, the different phases we go through and the variety of skills we thereby use.

There is still so much more we could do within the context of this inquiry but I want to leave it up to you now to continue to explore what this author has to offer to you as a reader and as a writer (for example you could go back to explore more of the resources on only2clicks​or keep reading his books).

I want to leave you with a quote - not from Michael Morpurgo but Kate DiCamillo - because these words have become so true for me especially in reading this story with you.

"Within the confines of a story shared aloud, we get to see one another in new ways. Our hearts are open to the story and open to one another — and because of this, some kind of subterranean magic occurs. Reading aloud binds us together in unanticipated ways." (Kate DiCamillo)

Thank you for opening your hearts to this story and for making the reading (and the surrounding author inquiry) such an unforgettable journey.

Tanja

(Please share in a comment to this post something you learned for future inquiries, for future reading and writing. I am looking forward to reading your comments.)

Our kindergartners' current unit of inquiry under the transdisciplinary theme Sharing the Planet is a wonderful opportunity for us to collaborate with the classroom teachers in running inquiry circles. So over the past two weeks, we (classroom teachers and librarians) supported our students in finding answers to their personal wonderings to then share some of their learning with their peers. The students were grouped according to their questions with classmates who had similar questions. Each group's inquiries were facilitated by one of us adults, guiding them through the process and helping them access various information sources in print and online.

An absolute highlight for all of us was meeting Dave Kleven aka Critterman, who kindly agreed to stay up late to meet both of our kindergarten classes on Skype all the way from Texas. A big THANK YOU to Ms. Alison for organizing the Skype and to Critterman for making the time and being such a wonderful expert for our students. His knowledgeable and age-appropriate answers and his patience with our young inquirers were fantastic!

In addition to talking with Critterman and exploring books, our students loved using PebbleGo, a database especially designed for younger students. We are currently subscribing to the "Animals" and "Science" databases. The information is very well organized, attractively presented and - best of all for our young inquirers - the text can be read to them. So developing literacy skills are not holding them back from accessing information on their own or with just little help. You are welcome to explore and access it also from home (the password is on the resource cheat sheet I shared earlier in the year and during conferences).

We were all amazed how confident our kindergarteners shared some of their learning with each other this week, helping us all to learn much also from the other groups and their topics.

Below are two videos for you to see our young inquirers in action. Enjoy!

Since my last PK2 update (in case you missed it, click here), we have continued reading books by Grace Lin as well as searching for answers to our questions about the author and illustrator in books and online. There has definitely been much interest for all of her books, with Ling & Ting stories and this week's read-aloud Lizzie's Friends the most popular ones so far.

Our students were fascinated by Lizzie's origami friends coming to life and enjoyed trying to make their own origami dog or cat after the read-aloud (here is the link to a website that shows you how to make some easy origami animals if you would like to do more origami with your child at home).

From reading Grace Lin's stories and watching the video below, we also got answers to some of our questions. Here is some of our learning:

Grace Lin is a children's book author and illustrator.
She is from the United States.
Her family is originally from Asia.
She makes different kinds of books: picture books, early readers and chapter books.
She uses bright colors in her illustrations.
The children in the illustrations look similar.
​She writes about what is important to her.

Further, our students got some expert advice from Grace Lin for their own book making:

Read as much as possible.
Always write and draw things that are important to you.

It was lovely hearing our students share what is important to them and what they would write and draw about in their books: their family, dogs (and other pets), their friends, school, dinosaurs - just to mention a few.

We will continue our inquiry about Grace Lin until the December break. Maybe you'll get a chance during the break to read some of her books with your child. I am sure they would enjoy that very much.

At the beginning of this year, Grace Lin gave a wonderful TED talk which I have referred to several times already. In case you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend watching it. It is a wonderful reminder of the importance of diverse book collections as well as quite generally of the importance of reading: books are mirrors, helping us discover who we are, and windows into the world out there, helping us to see and understand what life is like for others.

This past week, our third graders embarked on a new author/illustrator inquiry, by exploring books and listening to a read-aloud. There was an immediate interest for Graeme Base's stories, especially the illustrations seemed to intrigue our students right away. In the best picture books, there is always a kind of gap between the text and the illustrations - so that only when both are put together the whole story is told. Our students were keen on getting their hands on some of Graeme Base's books to explore the illustrations and share some first observations. In the images below you can read in orange what students noticed and in blue what they wonder about. You can tell from the observations and resulting wonderings that our third graders are experienced inquirers.

This is a wonderful starting point for our inquiry and I look forward to searching for answers to our questions with students. As with all of our author/illustrator inquiries, we are aiming at getting students excited about the authors/illustrators and their creative works, while allowing students to practise inquiry skills. Embedded in this inquiry will be amongst others revisiting/learning about the library's various online resources. This means students will get a chance to further familiarize themselves with our online catalog (through the Destiny Quest app) while discovering and exploring other kid-friendly and safe online tools.

If you are interested in finding out more about Graeme Base, I recommend visiting his beautiful and informative website (click here) - or check with your third grader over the next couple of weeks. I am sure they will have lots to share :) You are also welcome to stop by the library on any Tuesday or Thursday afternoon between 3 and 4pm to read some Graeme Base (and other) books with your child.

Besides their new author/illustrator inquiry, our third graders are continuing to make good use of the Destiny Quest app for finding books during check out. It is noticeable, how much more variety we see in the books being chosen and how much more independent our third graders have become.